This is my first post. I used to be a bit of a skeptic about AGW because I didn’t know anything. When Climategate happened, I read that the hacked data was posted on a server in Tomsk. I know that Tomsk hackers have a reputation for attacking Kremlin targets. The FSB (KGB) encourages them, but may not actually do the hacking. I wrote about this on my blog, and about a week later the British press started talking about Tomsk hackers. The FSB sometimes doesn’t do things directly, they encourage hackers to do it.
The FSB has actually commissioned studies about global warming. The Russsians are worried about it because the permafrost is melting and this will complicate getting oil and gas; still, they have decided to deal with problems as they arise. The Gazprom is very powerful—Andrei Illarionov used to work for them. He is a critic of these AGW scientists, and he has a Russian think tank and is at the Cato Institute. He’s not a scientist. He’s an advocate for oil interests.
Russian skeptics are not on the same page in the Russian media. Some say the scientists lied because they hid cooling. Others say the scientists lied because they overstated warming. They can’t have done both. This is why you don’t look at e-mail; you look at published research.
Russian scientists can be brave and do distance themselves from anti-scientific (KGB) propaganda. The Russians can’t afford to alienate their scientists, so sometimes science trumps the KGB. For example, the Soviet Academy of Sciences distanced themselves from the KGB-inspired propaganda that the US made AIDS. Finally the KGB admitted they had been behind that propaganda. One thing is that there is more discussion in the Russian press about global warming. It’s a good thing. I have a blog that discusses Russian views of global warming.
legendofpineridge.blogspot.com